JUNE 30, 2024: To Begin Again

Lisa Wiens Heinsohn

To Begin Again

Homily for St. John’s Episcopal Church by Lisa Wiens Heinsohn given June 30, 2024

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Lamentations 3:21-33, Mark 5:21-43

Just out of curiosity, how many of you are morning people? Night people? Neither? Both? I did not become a morning person until I was trained into it by motherhood and the necessity of getting up at 6:30 am with my child every single day for ten years, give or take. But I have found marvelous things about the quiet of the early morning. There is nothing like it. In the spring and summer, it is the best time to listen to birds. In the winter there is the breathtaking peace of utter silence and the magic of snow, and an occasional burst of color with a bright red cardinal. It is beautiful any time of year to watch the sun rise. It is so quiet and still. I am rested. Usually, the woes of yesterday haven’t yet woken up to trouble me. The world has begun again.  Morning is the time I connect with myself and with the Earth and with God. Morning is the time I write, and reflect. It is beautiful.

Today’s reading from Lamentations says this, in the New Jerusalem translation:

This is what I shall keep in mind and so regain some hope:

Surely Yahweh’s mercies are not over, God’s deeds of faithful love not exhausted; every morning they are renewed; great is your faithfulness! “Yahweh is all I have,” I say to myself, “and so I shall put my hope in Them.” Yahweh is good to those who trust and search for Them.

In case you aren’t familiar with the name Yahweh for God, it’s the English translation of an unpronounceable Hebrew word which means, “I am that I am,” or “I will be what I will be.” It is the first of two names God used to introduce Godself to Moses in the burning bush. Listen, I think this is important. God self-identified as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses’ ancestors. And God also said, “I am that I am, is my name.” Why that second name is important is because this God is more than the God of Hebrew tradition. There is about this God that which transcends categorization, transcends tradition or lineage, transcends any box. There is about this God an essence of Being, a Source of Being, that is beyond personification or description. This is the God that twelve step folks call the Higher Power, because we are humble enough to say no one person’s understanding of God can be definitive. It is this name for God that we can cling to when the traditional stories aren’t making sense to us. And it is this mysterious vast name for God that the author of Lamentations uses when, out of utter despair, they say that Yahweh is all they have, therefore they will trust and hope in this God. And right in the middle of this hope, they say that God’s deeds of faithful love are renewed every morning.

This ability to have hope in the midst of despair is a thread that runs throughout our scriptures. It is a hope in a living transcendence we call God or Source of Being that is greater than we are, and whose essence is love. In the gospel reading for today we see this same hope in the woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. In just a few lines we see everything we need to about her. She had spent all she had with doctors whose treatments had been useless; her affliction had only grown worse. So she was at her last resort. She had nothing left to lose. And we see that she didn’t come and directly ask Jesus for healing, face to face. Perhaps she was afraid that he too would disappoint her. Perhaps she was ashamed of her affliction. Perhaps she felt inherently defective. But we do know that her purpose and intention were very focused, driven by intense suffering, and she had decided what she would try, because she had seen other people healed from his extraordinary inexplicable man: she would just touch his cloak. And she did, and she could instantly feel healing flow into her body. There was a flow of energy that could be felt both by her and by Jesus. Something real transpired, and a new beginning became possible.

I wish every time we were sick we could all experience healing like that. I wish every time a person’s child dies they could be resurrected as the twelve year old girl was in the second of two miracles Jesus performed in today’s gospel reading. What I do know is possible is that we can experience connection with the unfathomable Yahweh, the Source of Being, the Higher Power none of us can ever own or even name, and we can always begin again. Just like the morning is a miracle every day. Weeping may spend the night, another scripture says, but joy comes in the morning. I once heard someone ask whether Episcopalians believe in being born again. The answer is, yes. We are born again, and again, and again. A life in alignment with God is sometimes begun in a single decision-point in one’s life, but it continues by being renewed over and over again. It is not only a life powered by one’s own efforts, although these too are critical. A life in alignment with God is one in which we renew our connection, trust, hope and nourishment with God every day, constant as a heartbeat or a sunrise. In humble reliance on the power and love of God, we step into our True Selves, live in alignment with our soul’s purpose, pour forth our own best efforts and receive the endless unfathomable gifts of the Spirit. There is a flow, a giving and receiving, that is required to make this work.

Today we are going to baptize a beautiful baby boy named Finnegan Thompson McTigue, who was born on Christmas Day, six months ago. This baptism is a beginning, an initiation into the body of Christ by water and the Spirit, a joyful welcome and affirmation of Finn’s inherent sacred goodness and an invitation to the Holy Spirit to empower and fill, guide and accompany Finn through every part of his life. Each of us will have the opportunity to renew our own baptismal covenants by affirming faith in the God of our tradition that we call Father, Son and Holy Spirit or Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit. But our tradition also calls this God Yahweh, I am that I am, beyond any such descriptions. You can say that too. I believe in God, Yahweh, I am that I am. I believe in the Source of Being whose essence is love.

How do you understand God? What is it that helps you renew your hope and connection with God every day?

There is a group from St. John’s that has been meeting twice a month on Wednesday morning at 6:30 over zoom called “Centered.” In this group we take turns bringing to the group a subject relating to the life of faith that we want to discuss. This last Wednesday we talked about how to hold our country’s political situation, how to move through the next six months leading up to the presidential election, with so much fear and angst and anger and division, so much that is distressing.  One of the things I told the group about how I try to stay centered and coming from the best place is a part of my morning ritual most days. Most mornings, in the midst of prayer and a small ceremony I do, I state my intention to live and think and speak and be present in a way that is in alignment with my True Self, my soul’s purpose, and the will of the Creator for the good of all life. This helps me realize how much power I actually do have. Although I don’t have much power over what happens in the national political sphere, I do have power over how I see my neighbors, including the ones who will vote differently than I will in November. I have power to honor every human being I come across and seek to encourage others to do the same. I have power to honor the Earth and all her creatures as my kin, as subjects in their own right with sentience and agency. I can make choices in my life, such as our choice to downsize to a townhouse this past October to reduce our carbon footprint and to invest in time in nature. I can cultivate curiosity instead of judgment about people. And I can choose to open to God’s power for miracles and synchronicity and flow.

If you could have any sort of practice you wanted that would help you every day to renew your connection with Divine Light and Love in yourself and beyond yourself, how would you do it? If you didn’t have to worry about what was traditional or not traditional, what is normally seen as prayer or not, if anything in the world was open to you, what would you do? How could you intentionally seek to begin again each day?

Always, we begin again. God’s love is renewed every morning. At the beginning of life, at baptism, in growing and living and dying and grieving and healing, we begin again. Let us have some silence now in which I invite you to connect deeply with your soul, your heart, your intuition, and face that which you deeply need, what gives you joy. How might you begin again? Amen.

10am Service